CRAFT REMEDIATION (2018-19)

CRAFT REMEDIATION

(2018-19)

Craft Remediation, is a site-specific and hands-on permaculture approach for phytoremediation. It aims to discuss how the praxis of care can be understood in a craft context, and how a more empathic approach to materials and resources can be activated on a local scale. The idea of caring and harvesting are explored not only in a human encounter, but materialized and extended in dialogue with-non humans, particularly plants acquired from the neighbourhood of Aspudden, and technology used to measure the photosynthetic efficiency in plants.

The investigation started at Vinterviken in Aspudden, a postindustrial site where Alfred Nobel invented an enormous revolution for armaments and mining explosives manufacturing: dynamite. The side effect of the industrial activities in Vinterviken that started in the 1860's have led to soil contamination in the area. In response to this specific local history, the artistic research explores, among other ideas, harvesting as a method for extracting pollutants from contaminated soil.

In the process of making, I have attempted to shift my relationship to materials — to move away from a linear extract-produce-discard model in favour of a more circular approach using a harvest-care-remediate model whereby alternative materials are derived from postindustrial leftovers. In this shift, the idea of care is explored not only to non-humans in the natural environment — to materials and plants, but it is also extended through practice-sharing and community building, to its in habitants, and its ‘resources’.

The project as a whole, is an artistic and technological investigation that, through an evolving objects, jewellery, installation and interactions, starts a dialogue about a possible ecological remediation, having as its starting point an emotional response to the postindustrial landscape we live in today.